


And Find Me Again

by illwynd



Series: Hide Me Away and Find Me Again [2]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Community: norsekink, Domesticity, M/M, Sibling Incest, tricksterishness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:08:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki, with his child safely born, has every intention of returning to the life of a trickster and general villain. But of course, at some point, the father must be told...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [Hide Me Away](http://archiveofourown.org/works/529985?view_full_work=true).

Of course nothing is ever that simple, Darcy thinks when she gets home a few hours later. Maybe it was Loki’s magic, maybe it was just the crappy reception out there in Hickville, but she’s got about a dozen messages on her phone from calls that never rang, and half of them are from Jane. (The rest are from her mom, a skeezy ex-BF hoping for a hookup, and someone inquiring about her nonexistent timeshare.) Last time they talked, Jane was still out in New York doing work with SHIELD on something that Darcy doesn’t even pretend to understand and probably doesn’t have the clearance to know about. But when she calls her back, Jane is flipping out.

“Oh my god, Darcy. You have no idea what’s been going on out here. I _hope_ you have no idea what’s going on. It’s just been crazy. Where were you? I tried to call you a bunch of times,” Jane says, her words coming out quick and terse like they do when she’s frazzled and distracted and trying to get something done really, really fast. 

“I was, um, out of town. Visiting a friend,” Darcy says, not exactly lying. “I think the reception out there was weak. So tell me what’s going on.”

As she listens to Jane rattling off the convoluted jumble of a story, her jaw drops little by little until she picks it up again. 

“Lemme get this straight,” Darcy says when Jane falls silent, and she rakes her fingers through her hair in a gesture of frustration as she says it. “Nobody had seen Loki for almost half a year, a bunch of new bad guys pop up all over the place there to take advantage of the suddenly wide-open territory, the Avengers tear their hair out trying to knock ‘em all down and Thor goes nuts thinking his brother’s dead, again? And so with the last new baddie to pop up, Thor starts a hurricane in Manhattan? Wha? I feel like I’m missing something here.” (Actually, she feels like she’s missed a lot of things over the last few months. That would teach her to take a 22-credit semester involving an 8 am class.)

“Well,” Jane adds, “that latest bad guy also taunted Thor with something that sounded very much like he was saying he’d killed Loki. Turned out it was a bluff or a… you know, I’m not even sure what he was trying to do, but I’m pretty sure the idiot regrets it. Or did. Briefly.”

“Fuuuuuuck.”

“Yeah.”

“So… has anyone actually found Loki yet?” Darcy asks. 

“No, and that’s the problem,” Jane replies. “Thor’s just about ready to tear everything apart to find him, and I think… it’s… gonna get bad.”

Oh no, Darcy thinks to herself. She can already see what’s going to happen. She’ll either have to keep her mouth shut and know that whatever damage is perpetrated by a grief-crazed Thor will be kinda sorta her fault in a way (and Jane cares about Thor, and Darcy cares about Jane, and she doesn’t want to see the big guy hurt anyway), or she’ll have to break her promise to Loki, and then she’ll have to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder with the only consolation being that the rest of her life probably won’t actually be that long. Well, shit. 

“Jane,” she says, not giving herself time to chicken out, “I’ll tell you something if you promise not to ask me even one question, okay? Okay. Tell Thor to chill out. Loki’s fine. I saw him this morning and he’s fine. Alive. Not even captured or anything.”

“What?” Jane practically screams through the phone. “How did you—”

“No questions! I’lltalktoyoulaterbye!” Darcy hangs up and, thinking better of it, turns her phone off completely and shoves it deep down to the bottom of her bag. Then she breathes out a heavy, shaky sigh and hopes that her solution walks a line of not-quite-breaking-her-promise that might save her ass when Loki finds out. Still, she decides it might be a good idea to be a tiny bit hard to find for a while, so she grabs her things and heads out to a little-known café that she likes to go to now and then. (They have free Wi-Fi, really fantastic Italian sodas, and the guy who makes the lattes is kinda hot.)

So an hour later Darcy’s sitting there nibbling on a scone and listening to a girl she almost recognizes from school picking her way through an old Stones song on acoustic when two figures darken the doorway, and as soon as Thor’s shadow falls across her, she’s groaning and pressing her hands against her face. 

“I thought I said no questions,” she grumbles as they approach. Then she looks from Jane to Thor, wraps the remains of her scone in a napkin, tucks it into her bag, and gets up, motioning for them to follow. Some conversations were never meant for the ears of hipsters. 

*

Out in the alleyway behind the place, she stands with her back to the brick wall, arms crossed in front of her. 

“I can’t tell you more than I’ve already said,” Darcy says, trying to sounds firm and calm. She’s already made up her mind not to spill the beans any more than she already has, and not just for fear of Loki’s anger when he finds out; it really wouldn’t be right for her to be the one to break the news, and she can’t deal with the idea of screwing Loki up any worse than he already is. “He’s fine, though.”

“How do you know this?” Thor asks her, pent-up nerves making his voice harsh, his hands clenching unconsciously into fists at his sides. “When did you see him? Where? How?”

“I saw him this morning. And yesterday and the day before that. But I can’t tell you where and I can’t tell you why. I promised him I wouldn’t.” Darcy sticks her chin out, stubborn. 

Jane eyes her. “But how did you find him? Are you sure you didn’t know about what’s been going on in New York?”

Darcy returns the look over the top of her glasses. “Are you kidding? No, I didn’t know. I’ve been buried under a pile of homework for most of this year. He called me. He wanted my help with something. And that’s really, actually all I’m going to tell you. He’s not in any danger.” She turns to Thor, who seems to still be fighting some inner battle. “Don’t you think he can take care of himself? I mean, he did manage to fall through your crazy wormhole thing without dying. Right?”

She watches as the two share a glance. 

“Darcy, if my brother asked for your assistance with something, then surely you can tell us what he has in mind. What Loki plans is rarely for the good.” 

He looks apologetic as he says it, but it’s still a shock and Darcy stares at him outright, something twisting in her guts as she remembers the faint, almost imperceptible scars on Loki’s mouth.

“What the hell kind of question is that?” she sputters. “Are you worried about him? Or just worried about what he’s gonna do?”

As Thor fumbles for a reply, she thinks about the blond-haired infant she’d last seen wrapped in a green knitted blanket with runes around the edges (and yeah, it’s just as awkward as she thought it’d be, knowing what part Thor played in the kid’s conception. Wow.) And then she thinks about the way Loki’s eyes followed the splotch of storm on the weather channel, and she wishes someone would just slap Thor upside the head, because he obviously doesn’t get it. 

“No, you’re not getting it,” she says, frustrated, pinching the bridge of her nose. “It wasn’t like that. It’s nothing bad. Look, I only told Jane to tell you that he’s okay because I thought you thought he was dead. I shouldn’t have even said anything, and he’s gonna be super-pissed at me if he finds out. He wants to be left alone and I’m sure you’ll hear from him when he’s good and ready. And that’s all I have to say about it.” She runs her thumb and index finger across her lips and makes a zipping noise. Then she raises her eyebrows at the both of them, daring them to ask her another question about Loki’s whereabouts. 

She’s sort of amazed when they actually give up and go away, Jane flashing her a look over her shoulder that Darcy can’t quite read. And even though her evening is kinda ruined, she goes back inside to finish her damn scone in peace and maybe get another latte if the hot guy is still working. 

*

“Son of Coul, have you discovered anything?” Thor asks a little while later. As they left the café where they had found Darcy, Jane pursed her lips and made a call to SHIELD HQ, asking them to try to find something in Darcy’s cellphone records from about three days ago. Any abnormal incoming calls and where they came from. Thor had looked dubious—Loki would surely cover his tracks better than that—but now Coulson is telling him that, although the number was irretrievable, they were able to pinpoint a particular call as coming from somewhere in a particular town there in New Mexico. A town that both Thor and Jane know quite well. 

They arrive within the hour.

*


	2. Chapter 2

Loki had spent much of the afternoon after Darcy left alternately resting, watching over the baby, and planning his next moves. The child would complicate matters. But Loki is still who and what he was; the infant, however perfect and beautiful he might be, cannot change that. And though he had not exactly missed it during his pregnancy—his mind had been wrapped up in the concerns of the moment—he greatly anticipates being able to once again antagonize his enemies and cause chaos and destruction at every turn. 

On a whim, though somewhat reluctantly, he turns the TV from the weather channel to one of the 24/7 news networks just as they begin to show footage of the situation in New York. He sits at the edge of the motel mattress, holding his son to his chest, brow furrowed at the unfolding of the story. And then he is, with quiet calm, gathering up everything in the room that belongs to him and leaving behind a few extra (rather large) bills on the nightstand to make up for the mess. 

It is never too soon to jump back into the flow of life. He might have wished it could have been at a moment of his own choosing, but he rarely gets what he wishes for. 

*

Thor and Jane together confront the night clerk at the only motel in town, asking after a young friend of theirs, dark-haired and slim and who might have had a lady guest at some point. 

“That guy?” the man says, scratching his side under the blue plaid flannel shirt. “He checked out not two hours ago. Kinda funny, he’d paid up for a whole month but didn’t even stay half of it. Not like I can give a refund, ‘course.”

“Did he say where he was going? I know you’re not supposed to give out information about your customers, but he’s been sort of upset lately,” Jane lies. “It’s really important that we find him.”

The man gives her an appraising look. “Nope, sorry, he didn’t say where he was off to. Just dropped the key in the bin and left.”

They thank the man and leave the little office room and stroll down the sidewalk that passes in front of all the doors in the place. Jane grasps Thor’s hand as they pass a door propped open with the maid’s cart. “It has to be this one,” she says quietly as she pokes her head around the edge of the door. When she pulls away, her face is stony with alarm. Thor looks for himself. For a moment he is only surprised at the clear state of disorder. Then he sees what Jane saw. A pile of sheets smeared and splotched with a red substance that cannot be anything but blood. Only Jane’s insistent tugging on his arm prevents him from pushing the cart out of the way and bursting inside in search of answers. With reluctance he follows her, and the two of them walk hurriedly away.

“Was that what it looked like?” Jane asks a moment later, her voice quavering. 

“I fear it was,” Thor replies. Blood it was, perhaps Loki’s blood. But he knows the blood of injury, of severed arteries and cuts and deep punctures, and that was not it. And even if Loki was injured, he had clearly healed enough to run, to escape once more. And Thor is sure that Darcy would not have hidden the fact from him if Loki had truly been hurt. He does not know what to think, but he begins to feel a strange anxiety deep in his being. All is not as he had suspected. There is something here that is being kept from him, and he would know what it is. 

However, he is forced to adjust to not knowing, for Loki’s trail has utterly disappeared, fading away in the dark of a New Mexico night, and they are able to follow it no further. 

*


	3. Chapter 3

Home once more, Loki delights in his newborn child. It is not the first time, of course, and no one would catch him in favoritism,1 but it is undeniably different this time. His child, and Thor’s. His heart catches when the infant seems to smile, when he laughs, when he learns to cry out loudly and happily to win the undivided attention of all who hear him.

“You intend to take after him, do you not?” he murmurs to the babe, his vision misting slightly. “I will not gainsay your decision, of course, whatever it might be,” he adds with a chuckle.

One thing that is notably different this time is the arrangements he must make, since he can hardly abandon his other, ah, duties for as long as it will take the boy to grow up. With his other children, either no such arrangements were required,2 or he was able to rely on the care of others, the children’s mothers or the veritable army of Asgardian women willing to watch over such youngsters. Here on Midgard, it is more difficult. He has long since effected the glamour that causes his son to seem human to all around him—eyes the green of new leaves in sunlight and warm pink-pale skin (though of course when the child grows enough to understand he will explain to him what it means to be born of two such bloodlines as he is3)—but the whole experience has driven home to Loki just how few people there are that he can trust implicitly. So what he does is hire a small staff of caretakers, highly paid and backed up with a web of spells. Spells of protection, spells of watching, spells of comfort. Nothing will happen to his son without him knowing, and anyone who attempts to harm him will meet with a dire fate. With these things in place, he is able to breathe freely and do what he must do.

And there is much to do.

*

Days pass, turning into weeks and then months, and everyone at SHIELD seems to breathe a sigh of relief. The growing madness of that last half year is fading away as if it had never been. Thor, who had grown agitated to the point of becoming a liability (terms like “loose cannon” had been thrown around for a time), seems to have found the assurances he sought and there is no more freak weather. And, at the same time, new villains who had recently begun to make a cruel and vicious name for themselves now begin to disappear into the shadows, those names effaced and fading. One bright young operative, poring through a stack of reports, feels a shudder crawl up her spine as she realizes just how many “situations” popped up real suddenly and then evaporated in the weeks right after Thor’s meltdown. It’s actually sort of creepy, she thinks, the way that happened. There was no apparent cause. Bad guys don’t just give up because some other dumb shlub bought the farm; that’s exactly when they would usually redouble their efforts. Instead it’s like the whole region is being cleaned up, fast and silent and secret, by someone they don’t know about. And sometimes she thinks maybe there’s something more familiar than that about it all, some hint of a clue. But there’s no hard evidence—and no soft evidence or wispy insubstantial spectral evidence either—so all she can do is put a little note on the files of the villains that have disappeared in this particular time-frame, and maybe mention her theory to the higher-ups when she gets a chance. It won’t go anywhere, she knows, but it always pays to look ambitious.

*

It begins with rumors, whispered suggestions, ideas occurring to the right people at just the right time: _Loki has been gone for months now. It is obvious that Loki has fallen. No one controls the East Coast—there is a vacuum of power, and filling it with conflicting machinations and schemes is only bringing chaos among all of the up-and-coming forces and preventing any of them from getting anywhere. It would be far superior to join together, to collaborate and cooperate. Of course. It is only sensible. Send your people to talk to my people. We will share our information and you can scratch our quid pro quo. Of course. Vacuum of power. Sensible. Cooperate. We will be unstoppable. Of course._

It is simple enough, Loki thinks. They trust each other even less when they attempt to work together than when they keep to their own corners—he knows this because he has been the subject of such suspicion often enough. When the third simple, rookie-level job they all pull together ends in disaster and blood smears, the accusations fly swifter and surer than bullets, and from there he is able to stand back in the shadows, feeling the teeth in his own smile and the flames flickering in his eyes. It is like tossing a handful of snow down a mountainside. The avalanche roars away on its own.

When the field is down to two or three key players, it fizzles out as they back away from each other, but that suits him just fine. He has seen them in action and it is always good to know the capabilities (and weaknesses) of the competition. Perhaps he can find a use for them later, he thinks.

As calm falls over the city, he sometimes wanders dangerously close to the Avengers HQ. He had been startled when he found out what had happened over the previous several months—particularly over the clear implication of what his brother, among others, had concluded. That had been part of the impetus for what followed: it should be known that Loki cannot be counted out so quickly, and he will give the lesson as many times as necessary until it fully sinks in.

The other part, of course, is that his brother is an idiot, but Thor is _his_ to vex and his to fight, and no one else is suited to take Loki’s place in that.

He wears another form—a nondescript and utterly ordinary one that he knows will attract no notice—as he passes across the street from the building, glancing casually over as he goes by. In memory he sees Thor’s face the last time they met (yes, then, yes…), and all he can think is how long it has been. And he knows he cannot put off their meeting forever.

*

1\. _Loki does not make others’ mistakes. He wouldn’t be able to fit them in among his own unless he gave up sleeping._

2\. _Giant serpents need not be bottle-fed, and eight-legged horses cannot be put in diapers, and world-devouring wolf pups tend not to wake one up crying in the middle of the night (though howling may be another story). These details are in fact some of the only advantages of birthing monsters._

3. _Because what kind of fool would fail to acknowledge something like that and expect that the lie will never come out? Oh yes. Odin. Loki is so fortunate to have such a father._


	4. Chapter 4

Darcy is surprised when she receives the phone call. No, not surprised—amazed, and thrilled, and she suddenly needs to hear everything, because she had been sure that if she ever heard from Loki again there would be no mention that they had become something like friends over the course of three days in a cheap motel room. And it’s really cool that he’s proved her wrong. 

“Come on, spill! Give me all the gossip,” she says, plunking down on the couch and quickly pausing the youtube video she had been watching on her laptop. Loki laughs and tells her that the kid’s doing great and he’s not doing too bad himself—or rather, “the child is well, as am I,” and she thinks that he sounds happy. And then he asks her to come for a visit, and she’s not sure what to think. The pause is probably half a second too long, because he’s asking if this is a busy time in her classes or if there is some other conflict.

“Nope, I’m on break, actually,” she says. “I’ve got nothing going on right now.” Really, she’s thinking about what happened the night after she left the motel—how she’d called Jane back and Jane and Thor had tracked her down and tried to get the whole story out of her. She ought to tell him. She ought to tell him now and get it over with, but she just can’t make herself say it. Anyway, it’d be better to do it in person, wouldn’t it? She’ll fly out to New York and she’ll totally come clean then. And that way she’ll get to see the kiddo while she’s at it. “You know what? I’ll come. I’ll get the next flight out. Just tell me where to meet you.”

She can practically hear the flicker of his grin as he reels off an address and a time that he’ll be there. And she’s already looking forward to it, despite the six-hour flight. 

*

When Coulson gives him the news in the form of a printout of Darcy’s itinerary, the tickets bought quite suddenly the same day of the flight and with no apparent reason for the trip, Thor clasps a hand to Coulson’s shoulder. 

“I knew you would not fail,” Thor says. 

“We also found a record of a call to her cell phone this morning. The call itself was scrambled and the number concealed, but it did appear to originate in the city,” Coulson adds calmly. “I’ll send a couple of agents to follow her when she arrives, and then we can go from there. We wouldn’t want to let Miss Lewis come into any danger.”

Thor furrows his brow. “I don’t think Loki would hurt Darcy,” he says.

“Of course not. But we don’t know what the situation is, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. Have you thought about who you’ll be bringing with you when we find him?”

“I had thought to go alone,” Thor replies. “There is something strange occurring, and I think I can best discover what it is if I talk to Loki myself.”

Coulson meets his gaze for a moment, giving away nothing. “If you think that’s best. Just ask the team to be ready in case you need backup, all right?”

Thor nods and heads off to prepare for the evening’s confrontation.

*

Darcy is really glad that she had just refilled her iPod with a bunch of new music, because damn she had forgotten how much she hates flying and at least it gives her something to distract her from six hours of hell. By the time they touch down in LaGuardia, she’s about ready to decide to just rent a car and drive back to Albuquerque when she’s done, but she’s also about ready to burst because she refuses to use airplane bathrooms unless she really, really has to. So when she finally gets out into the terminal, she does the smart thing and passes up the first couple of restrooms, lugging her sole carry-on onward to find one that’s not swamped with everyone else from her plane who had the same idea. 

In fact the one she settles on is practically empty except for a woman fixing her eyeliner at the sinks. When Darcy goes to wash her hands, the woman is gone, and leaning up against the fake white marble counter is Loki in a long black leather coat.

“You’re not supposed to be in here, you know,” Darcy says, trying for nonchalant but not quite getting there. “At least not looking like that. The trenchcoat is pretty snazzy, though.”

“My brother is having you followed. I thought I could save us both some trouble by catching you before they did.”

Darcy’s eyebrows fly up, and then she lets out a groan of frustration. Time to bite the bullet, she thinks. “Okay, I’ve gotta tell you something, Loki. The last time I saw you, well, that night… I talked to Jane, and she told me your brother was flipping out about you being missing, and I… I kinda told her that you were okay. I didn’t say anything more than that, not even when they both showed up to interrogate me,” Darcy says with a shrug, watching Loki’s face carefully. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want me to say anything, but I sort of had to. Forgive me?”

Loki just tilts his head and gives her a tiny grin. “I suspected it was something like that. They wouldn’t be following you unless they thought you knew where I was, and they wouldn’t be following you if you’d told them what they wanted to know. But we have other things to discuss. I hope you are up to playing a small part in my little deception?”

Now it is Darcy’s turn to grin. As he tells her his plan, she can’t help but wonder what she used to do with herself before her life got interesting. (And that's for "known for being willing to help out Norse gods of mischief" values of interesting, which she can't help but think of as an accomplishment.)

*

Darcy makes her way out of the airport, wading through the crowds with her suitcase dragging behind her. Once on the street she hails a cab. She makes smalltalk with the cabbie and presses her forehead against the tinted glass to stare up at the passing skyscrapers. When they pull up at the curb by the hotel she specified, she slips a couple of folded bills out of her bag and smiles brightly at the driver, telling him to keep the change. She registers at the front desk, specifies that she’s in town for pleasure—to visit a friend, actually—when the clerk asks, and accepts the key card, rambling on about desperately needing a shower and a nap after such a long flight. She takes the elevator up to the fourth floor and finds her room easily enough. Half an hour later she leaves again and gets another cab that takes her a short distance to a more industrial part of the city. Trying not to look over her shoulder too much, she sneaks around an overgrown hedge to a basement door in an old brick building. She tugs on the handle and the door opens with nothing more than a rusty squeal, and she slips inside. Once inside, she walks down the dark hallway to a small interior room, and there she waits. 

It doesn’t take long. Maybe three minutes later, footsteps—someone trying not to make a sound and failing—come down the hallway.

“Who’s there?” Darcy calls out once the footsteps stop just outside the door. 

The door creaks open, revealing Thor standing just beyond it. Darcy looks at him for a long moment from where she sits perched on an old worktable, one corner of her mouth tilted up in a crooked grin. 

“Sorry. It’s just me,” she says at last. “So why are you following me?”

Thor’s shoulders slump slightly. “Darcy. Why have you come to New York? Do you know where Loki is?” He asks the questions as if he doesn’t expect to be answered but has to make the attempt.

“Yeah, I know where he is,” she says after a pause. “And if you didn’t already think I did, you wouldn’t be here talking to me. Who else did you bring with you on this wild goose chase?”

“Sorry. It’s just me,” Thor says wryly, folding his arms across his chest. 

“Oh. That’s good.” Darcy smiles and then hops up and ambles closer to him until she can stand on her tiptoes and whisper into his ear.

“Hello, brother.”

*


	5. Chapter 5

Loki lets the illusion fall as Thor sweeps him into a crushing embrace. Thor is murmuring Loki’s name and asking why he’s been hiding from him and he’s tangling his fingers in Loki’s hair wishing to never need to let him go again, and for a moment Loki’s hands are curled around his shoulders and he can feel the tension flowing out of Loki’s body, there in the dank and shadowy room in the basement of a warehouse, in his brother’s arms. Thor has missed him. He has missed him much. But after a minute Loki squirms away, extricating himself and smoothing his rumpled jacket. 

Thor’s questions do not cease with the distance between them.

“Why did you evade me for so long? Where have you been? And what part does Darcy play in this?” Thor asks, and his hands are stretched forward beseechingly. 

His brother’s lips only twist in a sneer. “Shall I leave you a note the next time my business takes me away from serving as your source of perpetual aggravation?” Loki asks, darkly, bitterly. 

Thor looks at him in confusion. “I know something has happened, Loki. Please tell me what it is. I have been very worried for you. I tried to find you…”

Loki paces a few steps in the dark space. “Yes, I know. When I was nowhere in sight you suspected me of being up to _my old tricks_ ,” Loki says, biting off the words, “and when you could not find me you assumed that I had been killed. I do not know whether I should feel insulted by that. Although it is touching to know that you would destroy the normal weather patterns of several entire states because of me.”

“Loki…”

“Can you not imagine any other reason that I would not be around when you expect me, other than my mischief or my death? Truly?” 

Thor shifts on his feet. Loki, as always, is maddening, refuses to speak plainly, leaving him to guess at what his brother is after. “Is that the reason for your disappearance? Did you simply hope to prove that you are able to confound me? I have never denied it.”

Loki looks at him in disbelief before slowly shaking his head and bringing his hand to his face. “All right. We will talk. But if I am to explain myself,” Loki says, “perhaps you ought to sit down first.”

Obligingly, Thor strolls over to the worktable and swings himself up to a seat on it. 

Loki gathers his resolve. Then he approaches, reaches out to touch Thor’s face, lets his hand slip down to rest against his neck. “Do you remember the last time we saw each other?” he asks softly. 

*

Loki remembers. It would be impossible not to.

_He licks away the trickle of blood that crawls down from just above his eyebrow, and his lips spread in a broad grin, and he laughs without a sound, shoulders shaking, body convulsing. He aches all over in the places where Thor’s blows fell, and his mind is at once clouded and ablaze. He has his brother beneath him, and Thor’s chest rises and falls with heavy breaths, and the blue eyes looking up at him do not blink as Loki grinds his hips against him, making his intentions clear, though of course they have wound up here so many times that they cannot doubt where it will end. In the wreckage of their long battle, in a shadowed place where no one will stumble upon them, Loki presses one hand firmly down on Thor’s chest as he uses the other to loosen their armor and tear away their clothes, just enough, just enough._

_“Why do you always fight me, Loki? Why do you do this?” Thor asks between kisses that practically bruise them both, and Loki smiles, pleased with the knowledge that this fevered union goes against everything Thor tells himself about his purpose here, every promise he makes to his mortal allies._

_“Where would we find an excuse for this if I did not?” comes the answer. And then for quite some time full-formed words do not pass Loki’s lips. Thor makes certain of that._

_Thor whispers against his skin. “My brother, my heart… let me have you,” he says, and his lips are impossibly gentle against the bruises on Loki’s face, and Loki cannot refuse._

_He can’t help but think that this is but another aspect of their attempts to destroy each other: battle carried out by other means. He is certain of that as Thor begins to move within him and he cannot remember why he hates him and the bitter jealousy fades and all he feels is want. And love, love that aches and burns in his chest and makes him feel like he’s falling, and like he’s dying, and like there is nothing left in the world but him and an all-engulfing flame._

*

Maybe Thor blushes a little as he nods, remembering. It’s hard to tell in the dim light. But either way, Loki cannot resist leaning forward and catching his brother’s lips in a brief kiss before slipping away again. This is how it always is between them. Thor cannot forget what Loki is and what he has done for longer than it takes to fuck him, and Loki cannot stop himself from sneaking back after they have finished trying once more to strike each other down, though he is never sure whether it thrills him more to hear the whispered declarations of adoration or the growl of anger that comes after. And if all this is so, then he is only tormenting himself when he imagines he can tell Thor of their son and the revelation will not end in disaster. Nothing is ever that simple for them. 

Loki shakes his head, coming to a decision.

“This has been fun, but it’s not going to work,” he murmurs. He turns as if he intends to disappear once more and Thor darts forward to grab him by the wrist. 

“You will not escape from me again, not until you say what you have come to say,” Thor says. 

“Perhaps I was lying. Perhaps it was all just a pointless game, and we have nothing to speak about. Perhaps I simply wanted to see you,” Loki replies, turning back and meeting his gaze without flinching. 

“Loki,” Thor says gravely, “you arranged this meeting for a purpose. Credit me with being able to figure that out, at least.” 

Loki glances down to where Thor still has a hold of him and suddenly the skin where Thor touches is burning cold, so cold that Thor cannot stop his fingers from flying open and his hand from retreating to his own chest. “Well then. If you would know what I came to say, then follow me. You only, not your damnable little friends. Just you.”

Thor wonders how Loki knows that the SHIELD agents are still lingering outside, but he has little time to wonder as Loki slips quickly down the hallway and past the door to where the night waits. 

As he follows him, Thor is well aware that if Loki had wished to escape him completely, he could do so in an instant. As it is, he gets the impression that Loki’s flight is meant to tease, and perhaps to delay, to buy time to think; he catches glimpses of Loki flitting through a crowd or between lurching vehicles, they backtrack and cross their own path countless times, and occasionally Loki will pull up short for just long enough to catch his eye and grin—to make sure Thor is still on his tail, certainly. After months of worry and suspicion and uncertainty, he is willing to play along, and he throws himself into the chase. 

*

Meanwhile, the real Darcy has made it to a completely different hotel than the one that Loki checked into a few hours before. The spell that had made her look briefly like a forty-year-old librarian (at least that’s what she’d said when she saw herself in the mirror) and let her get out of the airport unnoticed has long since worn off. Loki had promised it would, and it wasn’t until he’d already gone that she realized she’d taken a pretty big flyer on trusting him with that. And he’d gone off looking like her. Who knew what kind of trouble he could get her into if he wanted? Or even if he didn’t try to. Loki could get into trouble just minding his own business on a street corner, she thinks with a snort. But she hadn’t really been worried.

“This will spare you the annoyance of being followed and interrogated again. And it will give me the chance to talk to my brother alone, if I’m right,” Loki had said to her in the couple of minutes they had to talk in the airport bathroom. 

She ran through that in her head a couple of times. “Wait… you totally set this up,” she had said with a laugh.

“Of course,” he had replied. And then he had given her the name of a hotel to go to where he had already booked a room for her under a different name and paid for it. “Tomorrow, if all goes well, I will find you there.” 

So now she’s waiting, watching trashy television and really hoping that everything’s going well with him and Thor. 

*


	6. Chapter 6

When they reach the doors to Loki’s place, Loki says nothing, only motioning for Thor to follow him inside. It is Thor who speaks in the depths of his surprise. 

“Loki, is this…? You have never before let me know where you dwell,” he says.

“Come on,” Loki says as if there is nothing unusual about the circumstance at all. 

Once within, he flicks on a few lights. The place is modern-looking and starkly decorated, and perhaps smaller than Thor had expected; just an ordinary human residence, to all appearances. 

Loki gestures towards the couch. “Mead?” he calls out softly in offer on his way into the kitchen. 

“Please,” Thor answers, seating himself and looking around in curiosity. He had known in some way that of course his brother must keep a dwelling somewhere on Midgard and that he must carry out all the usual activities of life, but for so long Loki has been to him only a nemesis, a laughing figure on the metaphorical battlefield, a pair of wicked green eyes glaring at him in the distance, a body beneath his in the aftermath, that he realizes he had not really believed that Loki had an existence apart from those moments. This was part of why his disappearance had so worried him. And as Loki returns with two glasses filled with pale amber, he feels the terrible gap between this moment and the years of their youth in Asgard, and how he can barely remember when last they sat together and shared a drink and peaceable conversation. Too long ago. 

Loki sits down across from him, sipping at his glass and casually, gracefully resting his ankle on his other knee. “Now that we come to it, I find I’m not sure how to begin. Maybe you should ask me what you would like to know,” Loki says, watching him with cautious eyes. 

Thor tries the mead, and briefly wonders how it is that such a taste can make him feel like he is at home once more. “All right,” he says, settling back and feeling almost comfortable, despite the topic of discussion. “I would like to know why I did not see you for almost a year. I would like to know why you went to Puente Antiguo, and why you asked Darcy for assistance when you were there. I would like to know whose blood you left behind you in the motel room where you stayed. I would like to know why so many villains perished or otherwise disappeared shortly after your apparent return. Those are my main questions.” 

Loki’s answering smile is tense and he runs his fingers through his hair and stares out the dark window in the far corner of the room. “Who would have guessed that you had it in you to be so clever a detective?” he asks. As he goes on, his eyes darken. “To answer your last question first, they disappeared because I had been gone too long, and when I returned it was a point that needed to be made. And it amused me to see how many I could get to turn on one another with one simple ruse. Satisfactory?”

Thor makes a gesture of not-quite-assent. “Continue.”

“And the blood was my own.” Here Loki pauses, drinking deeply from his mead as if for fortification. He meets Thor’s gaze before he continues, freezing the moment in his memory.

“I asked for Darcy’s aid… because I could think of no one else I trusted at the time, as I was. But it was mere accident that brought me to that town. I was distraught when I arrived there; indeed I was distraught when I left here, in a way that I cannot truly explain. I left because I had to. I had delayed as long as I could.” Loki’s voice, at first so calm, develops a quaver before it stops completely and he gets to his feet, agitated. He comes over to Thor and, quite alarmingly, sinks to his knees on the floor before him, though he doesn’t quite meet Thor’s eyes. He is clearly uneasy, and in his face Thor finds a desperation he has rarely seen there before, and if it is not sincere then it is a very good impression of it. “I asked you earlier this evening if you remembered the last time we met. I had a purpose in asking, Thor, a very important purpose.” 

Compulsively he reaches out and takes Thor’s hands in his, pressing his fingers into Thor’s palms. “From that meeting…” Loki says, seeming to force the words past unwilling lips, “you have a son.”

*

Thor’s head buzzes with the sudden rush of blood. “What? You jest, trickster,” he says, but there is no conviction in his voice. 

Loki stares down at the floor, does not look up, does not answer. 

“Loki?”

“No. No trickery. You know it is possible for me. I suppose it is simply amazing it didn’t happen sooner,” he says, almost too quiet to be heard. 

“But then… why did you not tell me? Why have you kept this knowledge from me?” Thor hears the edge of anger in his words as he speaks them, and he can feel the burn of it in his veins, but it is cut short by the sound of Loki’s answering voice that seems to tear from his throat. Loki's eyes snap to his, fierce and yet somehow hollow. 

“Why?! You ask me why I would not tell you that, that your brother and hated enemy was carrying your child? I did not expect it would come as welcome news! Would you bring your human friends tidings of this? Ask them to celebrate it? And what of the Allfather? Do you think he will be pleased at this, that your heir should be a child with Jotun blood, born of an exile from Asgard? What could this—what could _we_ possibly be but a shameful secret to you?” Loki has somehow scrambled to his feet and he stands with his fists balled at his sides, and his breaths come harsh and ragged with strain through clenched jaws. “Do not dare to claim otherwise!”

And he is right. Thor cannot deny that he is right, however much he might want to. His own heart pounds at the news now and what it will mean for them. But he still cannot accept it. His brother has lied to him often and hidden the truth from him countless times, but this? Yet his heart also pounds at the image that comes to his mind of Loki, alone, fleeing the city and the possibility of being found out—and fleeing from _him_. Whatever else has passed between them, no matter the acrimony and the distance, the idea of Loki fearing him rests heavy as sickness in his core. 

“That is too unkind, Loki, to both of us. You could still have told me. I could not be ashamed of you. I would have helped you, taken care of you…” 

“I am sure you would have, o brother dear,” Loki hisses. “But does it occur to you that I might not have wanted your help?”

“And yet you wanted Darcy’s.”

“Yes, Darcy, the harmless mortal who nonetheless manages to treat me as a friend and will certainly not hold that care above my head eternally,” Loki replies, and he sounds suddenly almost calm. Thor suspects that his anger has not truly subsided but has only fallen behind the veil, there to be tended and cultivated into bitterness. He knows his brother well, though he has never known him well enough to keep from rousing his hurt and anger in the first place, to Thor’s sorrow. 

“I do not understand why you distrust me so,” Thor says.

“Don’t you? You design your life around distrusting me. I simply return the favor.”

“No, Loki. You do all you can to make certain no one will trust you by repaying any attempt at good faith with deception. What do you expect me to do?”

Loki looks him over coolly. “Expect? I expect nothing from you, Thor. Nothing at all.” Then Loki turns away. 

Thor stands, frowning, takes a step closer and reaches his hand out as if to touch him, but then withdraws it. “Please, will you let me see him, at least?”

Loki turns, expression still cold, and holds his gaze before giving a slight nod.

He leads Thor through hallways lit here and there by lamps that give off the pale, tawny light Loki likes. As they approach a particular doorway, he turns to Thor and gestures for silence with a finger in front of his lips. Thor follows closely at his side as he slides the door open and peers in. There within is a small wooden cradle-bed in the center of the room, and it holds a tiny infant only a few months of age. Thor approaches as quietly as he can until he stands at the side of the cradle. 

As he watches, the infant sighs in its sleep and reaches a tiny pink arm above its head. Its mouth moves in a slow, dreamy motion. His child has a dusting of blond hair, and tiny doll-like fingernails. Thor finds that his own hand is groping at his side and he is not sure what for until Loki’s slips into it. He squeezes. He remains there, captivated, until Loki leads him away. 

When they reach the doorway, he pulls Loki to him, wraps him in an embrace and and buries his face in Loki’s hair. He needs to have him close in this moment, to feel what he feels, this welling of tenderness. “Loki, Loki… I apologize for whatever I have done that has made you hide from me for so long, but how could you possibly believe that I would not want to know of our child? How could I not?”

Loki permits the embrace but does not return it, and he wills the gleam of tears out of his eyes before Thor releases him. 

*

“What does it change, though?” Loki says softly, almost as if he were speaking to himself, once they have returned to the other room. “It is your right to know of your son, and I have not denied you that. But what now? You will not change. I will not change. Where do we go from here?”

He wanders across to the dark window as he says it, staring out at distant street lamps and the dark shapes of buildings. When he made his plans to get Thor alone in his presence this night and to tell him of their child, he had expected Thor’s anger with him, he had expected that Thor would rage and yell and that he would eventually calm himself. He had expected that. He had not truly expected the hand that reached out for him as Thor stood rapt, gazing at the boy, or the expression on his face as he pulled Loki into his arms. 

He has a sudden flash of himself as a small dark figure curled within the drab space of the motel room months before. He would find it almost impossible to relate what he felt in that time or what compelled him, how his mind wandered as he burrowed against the nest of pillows and the way the quiet and the shadows comforted him. And it was an experience so separate from his every interaction with his brother. For a time he had thought he would at least make the attempt to explain to Thor why he had run so far away, but now he feels no desire to do so. It does not matter. 

The situation stands, and that is all that is left to discuss.

He turns away from the window to find that Thor is watching him intently. 

“What do you mean by that? What now? Now we _must_ change, for his sake.”

“And am I to diminish myself for your benefit, or do you plan to become like me? As I said: you will not, and I will not, and I am more than capable of matching you in hard-headedness.”

“I know it well, brother,” Thor says, actually laughing. “So I propose neither option. What do you say to a truce? Merely temporary; I will not get in your way and you will not antagonize me, and to Hel with those who would object. Then we can share some small space in which to attempt to raise a child who is not as much of—how did Jane put it?—a complete headcase as…” Thor suddenly looks as if his foot has made its way halfway to his mouth before he can stop it. 

Loki’s lip quirks and he finishes Thor’s sentence. “As me.”

“Sorry.”

“Hmph.”

“We will have plenty of time to return to trying to kill each other later, if we still wish it,” Thor adds with a shrug.

His suggestion is purely ridiculous. The idea of a truce, with Thor graciously ignoring Loki’s misdeeds and Loki avoiding him as a target of mischief and pretending that Thor does not stand completely against him in the world… even Loki is not sure that he can pull off so great a lie. But it is the sort of simple solution that only Thor could dream up, and it appeals to a part of him that has only grown more exhausted, more worn down with the passing years. 

It seems half an age passes in silence as Loki considers it, studying Thor’s expression—open, and earnest, and there is hope in it as well as love.

“I suppose it’s worth a try,” Loki says. And this time, he does return the embrace. 

*


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning, Darcy’s ready to go by the time Loki knocks on the door of her hotel room, and he’s got an enigmatic smile on his face. 

“How’d it go? Everything okay?” she asks. 

“Better than I had expected,” he replies, still smiling. As they head out, he keeps his silence.

“All right, then, don’t tell me anything,” Darcy teases after a minute. “It’s not like I flew all the way here at the drop of a hat to give you a chance to play all sneaky instead of just calling Thor on the phone like a normal person. No biggie.”

He glances at her, feigning offense. “I did not twist your arm.”

She rolls her eyes. “But seriously. How’d he take the news?”

“News?”

“Oh come on. You told him about the kid.”

“Ah. Yes. Of course.”

“And?”

“He was pleased, after he adjusted to the idea.”

“Hm,” she says, nodding. Then she bites her lip and continues. “While we’re admitting things, I kinda figured it out. Whose kid it is.”

His eyes go wide in shock for just a split second before he catches himself, and she thinks that seeing that is probably worth all the trouble. 

“Well done” is all he says.

“But don't worry,” she replies, grinning. “I can keep a secret.”

*

When they reach Loki’s apartment, Thor greets them from the door with the baby in his arms, and Darcy can’t help thinking that it’s both really weird to see and also crazy hot, in a punch-to-the-ovaries kind of way. 

“Hey, Thor,” she says. “How’s the munchkin?”

As she approaches, the kid looks at her and reaches out a pudgy hand in her direction.

“Say hello to Aunt Darcy, little one,” Loki sings out playfully from behind her. “Perhaps he remembers you.”

Darcy laughs. “Yeah, I’m sure.” Aunt Darcy? She could get used to that, she thinks, and she lets the kid grab her finger. Unsurprisingly, he has even more of an iron grip than most babies. She’s just glad he hasn’t got ahold of her hair. 

“I now understand why you refused to tell me more when last we met,” Thor says to her as they all move into Loki’s living room. “Thank you for being a friend to my brother.” 

“Don’t mention it,” she says.

The three of them hang out for a few hours, talking and munching on Loki’s supply of junk food and laughing whenever the baby does something adorably doofy, and what really strikes her is how different they both are now. She’d never really seen them together in the same room before, and the impression she always got from others who had was that the experience tended to involve explosions, or at least a lot of yelling and snark. But now… she remembers how Thor acted around Jane before they decided that they made better BFFs than lovers, and she is reminded of that Thor—tender and considerate and puppy-eyed. But he’s also less hesitant, more comfortable. Every so often, he reaches over to brush a hand through Loki’s hair or squeeze his knee, earning himself a look from Loki, but there’s no bite to it and Thor just smiles indulgently. And Loki seems to have lost that subtle, intense edge of crazy that always seemed to be right under the surface. Instead he gets to his feet now and then and pads around the place in a way that should seem like nervous energy but doesn’t, weaves his words deftly in with Thor’s as they tell her funny stories from when they were kids, smiles easier than she’d seen him do before. 

At some point Loki breaks out the mead (Darcy thinks the stuff is amazingly horrible, but she gets used to it by about the third glass. Kinda.) and then at some point she’s got her cheek resting on her hand and she’s asking why it took them so long to get it all figured out. 

“I mean, you’ve had years and years. And years. Longer than anybody.”

“It’s because he’s an idiot,” Loki says. Thor, who had looked baffled, swats at him and laughs in a way that seems to rumble the whole room. A second later Loki reaches for his hand and holds it, loosely, between them on the couch, and the whole thing is just so sweet it gives her a toothache.

When she takes off back to her hotel room a little while later, promising to come back the next day if they want, they both get up to see her off. 

“Again, you have my thanks for all you’ve done,” Thor says as he squishes her in a warm embrace. 

Loki smiles and hugs her but doesn’t say anything, and his eyes flash as they part. She thinks maybe the edge is still there, just… gone nicer. Less destructive. Maybe it’s more like what he used to be like, before whatever "before" it was that happened to him. 

And hey, she thinks as she waves a quick bye-bye to the kiddo and shuts the door behind her, if it all works out, that’s good enough.

*

It is the second night that Thor has stayed. The first night, after their long and difficult discussion, Loki had gestured him toward the couch while he himself stayed awake, thinking, watching. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning the child woke with a cry, and he was surprised to find Thor only a step behind him when he rushed to discover what the infant needed and provide it. With a raised eyebrow he allowed Thor to take their son in his arms as he conjured a bottle of warmed milk from the kitchen, and he couldn’t help but smile a bit as his brother quickly figured out how very small children work—on their own schedules, in their own ways, and not in particular accord with what the adults who care for them desire. They spoke little the rest of that night, each absorbed in his own contemplations. 

However, tonight is different. 

When their son is safely asleep, Thor wraps an arm around his shoulders from behind, and his hand curves up to brush against Loki’s jaw. “It will be different to have you without fighting you first.”

Loki bristles and twists bodily, turning a stern face toward Thor, his mouth pressed into a dark line. “This arrangement is for Raði’s benefit. I said nothing about bedding you, brother.”

At Thor’s look of dismay, he breaks into a snickering laugh that goes on until he is nearly doubled over. “Oh, Thor, you know I have to have my fun with you one way or another.”

Thor takes vengeance on him immediately with a quick, harsh nip of teeth on the curve of his neck. 

But Thor is right: it is different without bruises or the harsh breaths of their scuffling washing over one another’s skin, without the rush of anger, the taste of a wet, slow trickle of blood. It is replaced with something that is just as much hidden and just as much theirs—for one thing, it was rare enough that they were ever wholly bare together, skin to skin. And when Loki presses a hand to Thor’s chest without the barrier of armor and clothing between them, he can feel the fast, solid thud of his heart, and he bends to whisper, “Mine.”

And then Thor is pulling him close to kiss him, cupping his face between his hands and murmuring to him in words that are theirs alone, and then their bodies move as one and feel as one, and he cries out, exulting, and Thor’s mouth covers his, absorbing the sound. 

It is what he has always wanted.4

Some other day they will have to face up to the weight of their history together—all the injury and bitterness, jealousies and betrayals, all the pain that two immortal beings can heap upon each other.

But it can wait. 

And maybe, just this once, it is that simple.

***

4. _If anyone asks, he might claim that this was his purpose all along. He is the Lie-smith. This fact should not be forgotten._


End file.
